Social Media Advice Archives - Page 2 of 3

Improving Your Relationships Online and Offline

We ALL do it. We are so busy and pressured to get everything done that we dash off an email without reading it through, checking the spelling, and so on. Or we make a comment, or what we think is a joke, in an email or on one of the social networks – only to find at the end of our plane flight that our boss has fired us. The young lady who made a racist tweet discovered to her cost that anything you say can and WILL be repeated or passed around online.

In this article, we will discuss some of the major trouble spots in online and offline communication, and how a few simple changes can lead to big results.

Email Relationships

One of the main issues with email is the lack of “tone” of voice that you would get from speaking to someone in person or on the phone. Email lacks the human touch. If you are working in a cubicle-based office where the people on your team are sitting right next to you but you always email, it might be time to get a bit chattier with them in the real world.

If what you need to discuss is something important that includes other people, by all means use email. Or, speak to them and then confirm via email what you understood to be the most important points and action steps.

Before hitting the SEND button, take the time to check over your email to be sure you are as clear as possible and that it is error-free. A good rule of thumb in any corporate communication is to never send an email you would be embarrassed to see posted online.

This is especially true of customer service replies. Customers are the lifeblood of most businesses. Unskillful replies can and do filter to the top of social networks all the time, perhaps tarnishing your reputation or that of your company forever.
One CEO made the mistake of emailing one employee he trusted that he would be offline for a couple of days to deal with some personal problems. When he returned, it was to his worst nightmare. Some of his “trusted employees” had stolen valuable assets, and a larger company was going after him in a hostile takeover bid.

Social Media Strategies

In terms of social media and online discussions, only contribute the bare minimum and never venture any personal information that might be used against you in some way.

If you feel you have something really helpful to say to others, join in. But don’t use the network as a soapbox to spout your own views. Every post or tweet should be about your customers, not you.

If you want to advance your career as an expert in your industry, don’t try to prove it by boasting about your skills and accomplishments. Your expertise will speak for itself when you give intelligent response to a person’s most pressing problems.

Finally, never “flame” anyone on a social network or discussion board, and do not respond in kind if you are. That would lower you to their level. The best thing is to ignore it. If you feel you can’t ignore the flame, simply say that everyone has their own perceptions. Remember, our relationships are as much about what we do as what we don’t do. Be courteous and polite to others and see what a difference it can make to all your business and online relationships.

Using Twitter for Networking

Several years back, networking required a great deal of work. People had to attend events and memorise other people’s numbers. It had to involve a degree of proximity. Luckily, times have changed and networking has become easier than ever before. Millions of people have embraced social media platforms like Twitter.

It has a simple, streamlined approach that facilitates fast, informal conversations. Its real-time communication capabilities make it a great platform for you to expand your network. As you will soon come to learn, there are many easy ways to use Twitter for networking.

1. Finding The Right People To Follow

The starting point for great networking is finding the right people. There are many tools that you can use to do this. Twitter Search lets you use search operators to search for specific keywords and people. You can therefore use it to search for influencers in your market or people talking about your field of expertise. In the “Who to Follow” tab, Twitter offers a directory of people that you might be interested in following. The suggested accounts are based on who you follow already. Some of the people you find and follow will return the favor and follow you too. Therefore, the more users you follow, the more users you will attract as followers.

2. Show Your Followers Your Personal Brand

Once you have searched for and connected with the right people in your niche by following them, you will have to ensure that your profile markets your personal brand. Details in your profile such as your bio and avatar determine what people think of you. A killer bio can get you more targeted followers. Your bio space has a 160-character limit meaning you will have to make the most out of every word you use. You should get your priorities sorted and start by including the most important information that you would like to get across to your targeted followers.

For example, if you are a graphic designer, start by providing this information other than writing about your addiction to football and golf. You may therefore have to exclude some hobbies. You should also include relevant keywords to enable people to find you during searches. For your avatar, you should use a recent photo of your face. For an organization with an account managed by many people, the logo should be used as the avatar.

3. Tweet Consistently With Your Followers In Mind

Your followers need to hear from you on a regular basis throughout the day and week. You therefore need to maintain an online presence by tweeting consistently. You should however take their interests into consideration. Ask yourself whether your tweeting is too much to the extent that you are filling up their feed with irrelevant tweets. In such a case, they will most likely ignore or block you.

The content you tweet should show others your interests. You can share current issues on your field of expertise, share advice, ask questions, solicit for opinions or post links to interesting articles related to your niche. In that way, you’ll have people reach out to you with comments or ideas of their own. This gives you an opportunity to add value by demonstrating your knowledge of your field as you also gain knowledge from the other users. This adds value and helps you attract even more followers.

All of your tweets will have an impact on your network. Think about how your tweets will be perceived by others. Make sure they don’t come off as being too sales-oriented or pushy. There is no harm in tweeting about what you are doing once in a while. Just make it fun and interesting, and don’t overdo it to the point that a visitor to your profile sees no relation between the information on your bio and the content in majority of your tweets.

4. Show Interest In Other People’s Tweets

You cannot successfully use Twitter for networking without showing interest in other people’s tweets. You need to respond to other peoples’ comments and questions. This can be done by typing @ along with their Twitter handle orby clicking the arrow button. Give a feedback or comment on others’ tweets. If the tweets contain a link to an article, give your opinion or whether you agree or disagree with the article and the reason for your decision.

A great way to show interest is by retweeting. Retweeting someone shows that you are paying attention to what they are saying and find them to be interesting. It is a way of showing interest in networking with someone without being too pushy. If you add some personal comments to the retweet, they’ll find out a bit about your personality before beginning more one-on-one networking.

5. Create A List of Influencers – Your Personal Learning Network

With Twitter, you can create lists of people you think are worth paying special attention to. This feature enables you to quickly read tweets from a certain list. Other people can also follow your list if they have an interest in the same subject. The list can be an important source of information. Create a public list of influencers in your industry and let each one of them know that they have been added to your list. As you come across people to add to your list, inform them that you have added them to show your recognition.

6. Share Your Network

As you continue to meet people on Twitter, you’ll come across people who have a lot in common. You should take the initiative and introduce such people. This will strengthen your network. The people you share contacts with will most likely do the same with you.

Does it start and end on Twitter?

After you successfully use Twitter for networking, you can go the extra mile. Spend time networking beyond Twitter. You can exchange phone numbers and talk over the phone or even chat on Skype.

Twitter is a great networking tool. Unfortunately, few people utilize it for this purpose. Make Twitter one of the important tools in your overall business networking plan and reap the benefit of establishing unlimited and valuable connections.

Are You A FED-Up Job Seeker?

Are you fed up of Job Search? Yes it can be frustrating when you are trying to find a new job and you just want it to come to an end and for someone to offer you are a job can’t it! Well I want you to be really FED up! But not in the way you might think and not that I am wishing you more weeks and months of job search. But I want to suggest that you look at your job search in perhaps a different way.

This morning I had a telephone conversation with Steve Radcliffe which came about purely by chance. For those of you who may not recognise the name he is the author of Leadership Plain and Simple which for me is probably the best book I have ever read on Leadership.

I had a job interview around lunchtime today with an organisation that has taken on board Steve Radcliffe’s Leadership model. I had therefore taken the opportunity to re-read his book to refresh my memory on some aspects of the approach. Having done so I dropped Steve a line thanking him for re-inspiring me about something I am passionate about as a Learning and Development Professional which is keeping things simple!

I was pleasantly surprised to get a message from him asking if I would like a discussion about his Leadership Model before my interview. Of course I was delighted to accept and we had a really excellent discussion. So what’s all this got to do with job search and being truly FED up?

Well, if you are not familiar with Steve’s Leadership Model it is Future, Engage, Deliver (FED) and is a model which can be applied to so many people at every level of an organisation but equally to individuals who are not “leading” anyone.

In summary the model is based around the idea that effective leaders need to do three things:

Future – The Leader needs to have a clear vision that they can articulate about where the organisation is going. Or to put it another way they are “up to something” that they really care passionately about.
Engage – The Leader needs to be able to engage others, bring them onboard and get them moving towards that future vision.
Deliver – The Leader needs to be able to make things happen.

I love the simplicity of the model but equally the depth of insight it offers into the role of Leaders. If you want to explore it in a little more detail then I highly recommend getting yourself a copy of Leadership – Plain and Simple and like me you might find your views on leadership changing. Because as Steve shows leadership isn’t that complex!

During our conversation this morning Steve asked me how I was applying FED (Future, Engage, Deliver) right now. I didn’t really need to think about it because having been re-engaged with the concepts through reading the book again it is something I have been thinking about. As a Job Seeker I am “up to something” that I care passionately about. I have a clear understanding of the type of role I want to be doing and the type of organisation I want to work with. I am Engaging people through networking in many different ways, doing work on making relevant people aware of my personal brand and continuing to interact with people across social media. Then we come to “Deliver” and that of course is about ensuring that I am taking the actions required and getting others to take action for and with me to ensure that I can create the “Future” that I want.

I appreciate that at times it can seem a lonely, heartless task searching for a new job. However, if we think about it in terms of the leadership skills we can and are demonstrating it can make it a much more focused activity. Equally next time you are at an interview and you are asked when did you last demonstrate real leadership skills you can talk about your job search and you can also demonstrate your awareness of Future, Engage Deliver which makes leadership simple, understandable and effective.

As I said earlier I would highly recommend you getting hold of a copy of Leadership – Plain and Simple (UK) and if you are reading this in the US then you can get it here.

Do You Need To Lighten Up?

No this isn’t a call to suddenly become full of the joys of spring whilst you are searching for a new job. However, the results are in and it would appear that I definitely need to Lighten Up and you may well do too.

Let me explain. Various people of late have been talking about a website where you can upload your profile photograph(s) and get feedback from others on your picture against three criteria:

Competence – do you look like a competent individual?
Likeability – do you looking friendly?
Influential – do you give off an air of authority?

The prevailing wisdom, supported by some research, is that we are more likely to feel drawn to people who are likeable rather than those we necessarily see as competent or influential. So what does this mean for the job seeker? Given that our online profiles, whether they are on LinkedIn, Twitter or anywhere else that we open to the general public, are now seen as a key part of the complete job search campaign, then I think we need to be very aware of it. The research shows that when people are skimming through lists of people who are returned as matching their keyword searches (think recruiters searching LinkedIn) they are more likely to click on those that they perceive as “Likeable.”

Personally I hadn’t given it very much thought and had always gone for a serious looking (professional?) image to use on my profiles albeit that I had long since forsaken the collar and tie look! However, I asked someone whose opinion I value to review my LinkedIn profile recently (you can see it here Paul Duxbury) from top to bottom.

Their feedback was invaluable in terms of many areas of the profile but there was one thing that they commented on above all else. You guessed it! My profile picture! Their comment was that they thought that I looked “seriously, seriously serious” and that I was bordering on looking a little intimidating! Not quite the image that I wanted to project but given that I don’t especially like pictures of me smiling I had decided to go with a serious looking one from the professional photo shoot rather than the more relaxed looking picture.

With that feedback and after a little thought I decided that I would change my profile image to one with a hint of a smile and uploaded it to LinkedIn and the various other social media sites thereby ensuring a consistent personal brand.

I then decided to upload my original profile picture and my new picture to the site I mentioned at the start of this post which is PhotoFeeler which is free to use and you gain credits to have your photo voted on by voting on others. There is also an option, which I haven’t used, to buy credits so that you can get quicker results.

I was not too surprised, given the feedback I had received, that my original image was perceived as competent and influential but didn’t score too well on the likeable scale. However, what did throw me was that my new image was not scoring much better. Now fortunately one of the options on the site when you are scoring/voting on pictures is that you can leave a comment. When it came to my new picture there were quite a few comments that it was far too dark. Easily solved! Open the picture editor and lighten the picture, which is exactly what I did.

I then uploaded the new “lightened up” image to PhotoFeeler and waited for the scores to come in. A dramatic improvement with the feedback being that I look competent, influential and likeable!

It may only seem like a small thing but given the increased use of visual marketing in so many areas getting our online profile picture right when we are looking for a job is crucial. So many decisions can be made on the basis of a cursory glance and whether we like it or not we have to deal with it. Friends and family might tell us that they love our profile image and think it really captures us. But what about people we don’t know which for the most part is the group that recruiters belong to?

Therefore given that it’s free to use, in exchange for helping a few others, what have you got to lose. Check out what people you don’t know think of your profile picture by trying out PhotoFeeler.

How to Use Social Media in Your Job Hunt

I recently asked Oasis HR to share their thoughts on how job seekers should be making use of the various Social Media sites as part of their job hunt and I am delighted that they have shared their thoughts below.

Gone are the days where agencies and internal recruiters would have a job role to fill, post an advert and wait for responses and that be it. Nearly everyone has now heard of the term social media and a large majority are using it but are they using it effectively to benefit their career?

In this day and age people need to be more proactive and think about how they market themselves as professionals. As the number of platforms people can find information about you increases, the more important it is to create a ‘personal brand’. This is especially true for people actively seeking jobs. Below are some tips on how to optimise your personal brand on different social media platforms to be appealing to recruiters and companies. If you want to position yourself as a valuable asset for a specific industry or promote your unique skills-set, then it’s up to you do to this online (even more relevant in today’s candidate driven market).

Firstly not every platform is relevant for every industry and job role, but you need to ensure you have presence on a number of platforms to expose yourself effectively to the businesses you’re targeting. Below are the platforms that we, as recruiters, may use to headhunt talent with tips on how to optimise your profile on each. Bear in mind that at Oasis HR we predominantly operate within the mid to senior HR market, however these tips are mostly relevant no matter what job you’re looking to secure.

LinkedIn

Join groups and network with relevant industry bodies and thought-leadership communities
If you’re actively searching for a job, update you headline to state this and put a contact number. For example ‘seeking new opportunities, please contact on 077********’
Make your headline different to your job title so that you come up in more search results
Make sure profile is set to public
Get people to endorse you for relevant skills
Comment on relevant articles in your field to increase your exposure to recruiters (this also helps you position yourself as an industry expert)
Incorporate a blog into your profile
Connect to as many relevant recruiters as possible
Research prospective employers’ company pages and connect with relevant contacts when possible
Have a look at another blog we wrote on 13 tips to optimise your LinkedIn profile

Blogging

Blogging can be great tool for increasing your exposure and helping you to be seen as an industry expert. It is important to blog relevant industry articles but also communicate it in your own style to give the reader an idea of your personality. A blog can also be something you present in interviews showing your passion and knowledge of the area you are applying for.

Facebook

Follow corporate pages and comment on discussions. Also follow the careers page of companies you want to work for to gain information on the company and receive real time updates of new requisitions

Make sure your profile looks professional to the outside eye. Facebook is a tool we all use to engage more informally with our personal networks, so be conscious of your privacy settings and think twice about the type of posts and pictures you’re sharing if you don’t restrict your content to ‘friends only’

Twitter

Another tool to market yourself. If you follow the right people this will give you content to post much quicker than searching for it yourself
Re-tweet industry experts / news and tweet any of your own content to ensure you are seen as knowledgeable in your industry
Follow and engage with companies
Many companies post jobs via Twitter and also use hashtags to add a degree of ‘searchability’ to their hiring opportunities. Play around with your searches to uncover roles relevant to you

Google+

This social media platform offers a real opportunity for candidates and recruiters. Although it is not as well used as other social media sites, many recruiters are beginning to capitalise on the platform from a headhunting perspective, so again it can provide you with a further opportunity to reveal yourself to recruiters

Make sure your profile represents your personal brand and your areas of speciality
Have your contact details present
Use circles and communities to network and read around your industry

If you don’t have time for all of the above, we would highly recommend you focus on a couple of social media platforms and ensure these really represent you. The more people you follow that are relevant to your industry, the more information and insights are at your disposal to post on your own pages. But most importantly you are dramatically increasing your chances of crossing paths with a recruiter who might just have your dream job at their finger tips!

Oasis HR

A lot of businesses will tell you that they’re on an exciting journey with great projections for the future. We really are. Following our ‘back-bedroom’ origins in 2004, we’ve come a long way; globally recognised awards, international operations and an established APAC networking group.

We certainly don’t intend on slowing down any time soon. Through a blend of ambition, dedication and commitment to our industry sector, HR, Oasis HR will become the…Number one Global HR Recruitment partner of choice.

You can connect with us on Twitter at @theoasishr